Namibia? What Namibia? Chinese Web Censors and the President’s Son

It’s not clear that the son of Chinese President Hu Jintao has any direct involvement in separate African and European investigations into allegations of wrongdoing at a company he used to run. But one thing that is clear is that for Chinese Internet censors, this story about as sensitive as it gets.

Hu Haifeng’s former company, Nuctech Co., is under scrutiny from anti-corruption officials in Namibia investigating a deal in which the local government purchased cargo scanners from Nuctech. Investigators say he isn’t a suspect. The European Union is investigating whether Nuctech engaged in unfair trade in its sales of X-ray scanners, following a complaint it was selling the products at abnormally low prices. It isn’t clear when the younger Mr. Hu left his position at Nuctech. He’s now a senior official at its parent company.

The cases, which don’t appear related, are extremely sensitive in China, where relatives of top leaders keep a very low profile and where officials fear that any link to corruption in a top leader’s family could lead trigger widespread public anger.

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So it’s not surprising that censors have been scrubbing the Web of any trace of the story in China.

Web pages with the story from foreign news sites that are normally accessible in China were blocked for at least some users as of Wednesday. And even the name “Namibia” was at least temporarily blocked for users in China of Chinese search engines, according to a report by China Digital Times that said the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department has ordered the Chinese news media and news Web sites to censor a list of words. Other blocked search terms include Hu Haifeng’s name, and that of his current company. As of Wednesday night, searching Hu Haifeng’s Chinese name on Baidu.com did turn up results — but none of them about the president’s son. A message at the top of the results page said “In accordance with related laws, regulations, and policies, some search results are not shown.”

On Tuesday, the technology channels of two leading Chinese Web portals, Sina.com.cn and Netease.com, were down for at least a couple hours. Neither Sina nor Netease would comment on why. But Netease on Monday had carried a story on the Nuctech Namibia case based on a report by the BBC, and Sina’s tech page had carried similar story Tuesday morning. Those stories, which have since been removed, didn’t mention Hu Haifeng per se, but said that “relevant people” from Nuctech might also be questioned by Namibian officials.

(Saved versions of the Chinese reports are available here for Netease, and here for Sina.

On Tuesday morning, both sites’ tech channels — where the Nuctech stories were posted — couldn’t be accessed. Users who tried were given an error page with a message stating that the page couldn’t be found. Hours later, attempts to access the tech channels were automatically redirected to the general news pages of the two portals. The channels didn’t resume normal operation until late afternoon, sans Nuctech stories.

Also on Tuesday, a couple more Web sites were blocked or suspended service, Chinese Web users reported, including Danwei.org, a Beijing-based English-language Web site specializing in China’s media affairs, and Mini blogs Digu and Zuosa.

“Entirely shutting down both channels for most of a working day is pretty big,” said a person who watches the Chinese Internet closely, “somebody was really pissed off. A message was clearly being sent.”

The Nuctech case censorship follows other recent moves by the government tighten control of online news and information. Youtube was shut down in March after carrying videos on an uprising in Tibet. Flickr and Twitter were down in June right ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident. Fanfou, a Chinese Twitter-like site, and three other Web sites were shut down for “maintenance” earlier this month in the wake of ethnic rioting in Xinjiang. And last week, according to reports, at least five bloggers were detained for reporting an alleged gang-rape case in southern China’s Fujian province.

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